Antipsychiatry News Clips

1998
Commentary on current news by
Douglas A. Smith, webmaster of this website

Campaign of Misinformation About "Depression"
ContinuesArticles in the September 1998 issues of both
Tufts University Health & Nutrition Newsletter and Harvard
Medical School's Harvard Health Letter promote these
psychiatric myths: (1) Unhappiness or "depression," if intense,
is a disease. (2) Psychotherapists have special skills
for helping people. (3) So-called antidepressant drugs
are effective. The Tufts newsletter says "The good news is
that depression is a treatable condition... People, and that
includes older people, who feel generally depressed or 'blue'
should speak to a physician about getting treatment with a
therapist, antidepressant drugs, or both" (p.
7). Similarly, the Harvard newsletter says,
"depression is largely treatable, with either talk therapy,
antidepressant medication, or both" (p. 8).
In fact: (1) Unhappiness or "depression" is not a
disease however intense it may be. It has never been shown
to have a biological cause. Therefore, feelings of
despondency or "depression" cannot be "treated." They must
instead be eliminated by changing the life experience or life
circumstances that caused them. (2) So-called
psychotherapists have no skills not possessed by untrained
persons. (3) So-called antidepressant drugs have no
specifically antidepressant effect. The closest they can
come is disabling a person's brain and fogging his mind enough
that he can no longer mentally focus on whatever it was that was
causing him to feel sad or "depressed." Most so-called
antidepressants have general brain-disabling effects that
promote despondency or "depression" both through their
neurotoxic effects and their tendency to make whoever takes them
less effective in life. These
misleading articles, emanating from two of the world's most
esteemed institutions of higher learning, illustrate that in
psychiatry our most esteemed "experts" are not perceptive or
brave enough to recognize and state that psychiatry's claims are
false.

1998 Study Shows Antidepressant Drugs Work Mainly as
Placebos
A study of 2,318 patients by University of Connecticut
psychologist Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., and Guy Sapirstein, Ph.D.,
found that 75% of the effect of so-called antidepressant drugs is
a placebo effect and that the other 25% may be caused by the fact
that "most participants in studies of antidepressant mediation
are able to deduce whether they have been assigned to the drug
... or the placebo" because those receiving the real drug have
side effects (dry mouth, dizziness, lightheadedness, etc.) not
caused by placebos (sugar pills, etc.). The study is
titled "Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo: A Meta-Analysis
of Antidepressant Medication." It included people taking Prozac,
imipramine, and lithium. A news release about the study
by the University of Connecticut appears at http://www.
ucc.uconn.edu/~wwwnews/rel98119.htm.
The study is published by the American Psychological Association
at
http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002a.html

Drugging Children with Ritalin to Curb
Hyperactivity The cover story in the November 30, 1998
issue of Time magazine, titled "The Age of Ritalin" says
"Production of Ritalin has increased more than sevenfold in the
past eight years, and 90% of it is consumed in the U.S." The
article says Ritalin, used for
a nebulous "illness" called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD) works "but in ways and for reasons
that are still
not entirely clear. ... not enough is known about the risks
and
benefits of long-term Ritalin use... Given the explosion in
ADHD
diagnoses and Ritalin use over the past decade, the disorder is
surprisingly ill defined. No one is sure that it's a
neurochemical
imbalance ... There is no blood test, no PET scan,
no physical exam that can determine who has it and who does not.
... For a drug that's been used for more than a half-century, we
know surprisingly little about how Ritalin acts on the brain...
ADHD is still something of a mystery to doctors,
who speak of it sometimes as if it were a single condition and sometimes as if it
were a broad range of problems. ... the latest
research raises more questions than it answers. ...no studies have run
long enough to see if it has a lasting effect on academic performance
or social behavior. ...A positive response to Ritalin doesn't
automatically mean a child suffers from ADHD.
Stimulants can temporarily sharpen almost anyone's focus."
Many of us who oppose psychiatry realize
there isn't any such thing as ADHD just as there
is no such thing as schizophrenia. In each case, the "disorder" exists only in the minds of the people who believe in it. Some children are so full of energy and are so undisciplined they exceed the limits of their parents' patience and tolerance and are labeled "hyperactive" or as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD). Some parents respond by drugging their children in hopes a drugged child will come closer to fulfilling their expectations or will be easier to manage. It has nothing to do with illness. It's entirely about management and control.